Bio

Allan Hamilton joins the Department of Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as an intern (relegated, of course, to the back row).

Allan Hamilton started his working life as a janitor. He would eventually go on to graduate from Harvard Medical School and complete his neurosurgical residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Hamilton holds four Professorships at the University of Arizona in Neurosurgery, Radiation Oncology, Psychology, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been chosen by his neurosurgical peers as “One of America’s Best Doctors” for the last eighteen consecutive years and selected as “One of the Leading Intellects of the Twenty-First Century.”

Dr. Hamilton traveled to Africa as a 3rd year resident to work in the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon as a Schweitzer Fellow from Harvard Medical School. (click photo to enlarge)

Dr. Hamilton has held positions as Chief of Neurosurgery, Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona. Dr. Hamilton now serves as Executive Director of the Arizona Simulation Technology and Education Center, a multi-disciplinary think-tank at the Arizona Health Sciences Center devoted to developing new technologies and training procedures to reduced preventable medical adverse events. He has authored more than twenty medical textbook chapters, fifty peer-review research articles, and has served on the editorial board of several medical journals. He is also a decorated Army officer who served in Operation Desert Storm.

He has been the subject of two award-winning documentaries. The first is Playing with Magic which chronicles his work with horses and was directed by Emmy-award winning director, Wayne Ewing. The second, Consider the Conversation, reviews his advocacy for end-of-life care for terminally-ill patients and was recently featured on PBS. His equine work has been showcased on the NBC “Today” Show, ABC News, CNN, and PBS. He is a frequent guest on NPR, and has been featured in Western Horseman, Equus, and Horse & Rider.

For the last several years Dr. Hamilton has served as medical script consultant on more than one hundred and fifty episodes of the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy and four seasons with Private Practice. He is listed with several speakers bureaus, is an Elite Speaker for Cunard’s Enrichment Programme, and has served as either a keynote or invited speaker at over three hundred events. He has a third book scheduled to be published in 2016.

In 1988, Capt. Hamilton (standing, back row, right) was the Commanding Officer of the United States Army Mt. McKinley Medical Research Expedition which devoted 6 weeks to developing a research station at 16,000 feet to evaluate more than 200 climbers who manifested symptoms and signs of Acute Mountain Sickness.

Under Capt. Hamilton’s command, the medical team stationed on Mt. McKinley carried out no less than seven separate rescue missions to save climbers stranded on the mountain by adverse weather conditions or physical ailments. One of the members of the research team perished in one of these missions.

Dr. Hamilton has served as the Chief of the Division of Neurosurgery and Chairman of the Department of Surgery, one of only two neurosurgeons in the country to hold that position at the time. Dr. Hamilton is the recipient of numerous teaching and scientific awards, including being the only American to be awarded the Lars Leksell Award for pioneering discovery in the field of Neurosurgery.